Joshua Cutchin’s new book Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death & the Paranormal is a combination of “I knew that” and “How did I not know that?” for me. It seemed that rather than being a rare and ephemeral thing, that placing the UFO experience in the context of something eventually encountered by everyone, namely death, that the seemingly inexplicable is almost normalized.

The title came from a quote by Whitley Strieber’s late wife Anne, who said that the UFO and abduction experience “has something to do with what we call death.” Josh took that concept and unfolded it into a two-volume, encyclopedic work that will be a reference for years and probably decades to come.

We discussed the concept of “psychopomps” and how they are analogous to what we term as “aliens,” the prevalence of animals and beings with animal heads in abduction and close encounter reports, and the idea of the UFO itself as a symbol of transport, such as the boat that carries the souls across the river of death in many mythologies. The research into and writing about these ideas and many others Josh said were “an absolutely transformative experience in many ways with some of the most profound synchronicities I’ve ever had.”